ABSTRACT
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was staged in 1994 in Jerusalem in a cooperative production by an Israeli theatre and an Arab one from East Jerusalem, under the direction of both an Arab and a Jewish director. Romeo was played by an Arab actor, Halifa Natur, and Juliet by the Jewish actress Orna Katz. The play was intended to be performed on the border between east and west Jerusalem. The Arab director, Fuad Awad, considers this famous ‘love story’ to have ‘two levels — one of love and the other of hate and war, each equally valid’. His conception of the play is one of ‘a dispute touching on life in this country, with little need to alter the text, other than by slight hints to indicate the similarity’.
